Press release: Umbra jumps into VR game development

Today is a great day for us as we proudly announce our next project which will be something else entirely. As you may know already, we are big on improving 3D graphics performance especially in games and VR, but we haven’t actually made any content ourselves. This is something we have always felt sorry for and now that we are shipping Umbra 3.4 rather soon, we’ll have the chance to shift our focus to that direction. I am proud to let you all know Umbra is also going to be a virtual reality games developer starting year 2016!

The first concept we are bringing into life is the Umbra Programming Simulation, in which the player will assume the role of a anonymous junior programmer working with cryptic new technology at Umbra labs. Puzzle by puzzle the mystery unfolds as the player progresses through actual programming tasks from various areas and difficulties. Umbra Programming Simulation will feature an office like setting which is fully interactive – you can make coffee, fight the printer and even talk with your team mates to learn about secret character specific side missions we have in store for you. This the most immersive VR puzzle experience you have ever seen, and we are bringing it to you by the end of this year!

As we are huge fans of free-to-play model, mostly because of the money it tends to bring along, we decided that Umbra Programming Simulation would be free to each player. How cool is that, a full VR simulation with practically no cost at all! All you need to do is sign a document which may or may not resemble an employee contract for us to utilize your play-through by distributing actual programming tasks we need someone to do in order to finish our upcoming product that we also scheduled for Q3-4 this year and are too busy to do ourselves. Or, you can use micro transactions in order to gain your independence and keep playing as a free problem solving agent, working alone. With no office. Or coffee. No printer, or even fax. But free.

“We love games here at Umbra and it is wonderful to finally have the chance to develop our own cutting edge virtual reality experience where we can utilize our exquisite technology ourselves. I feel like we are really giving back to the community here,” says the company CEO Otso Mäkinen.

In 2017 we will launch a huge expansion which let’s the player try different areas like marketing and sales, as we are really looking forward to grow our business and need cheap labor. Each DLC will be delivered without any additional cost to the player.